Abstract
A global economy and increase in customer expectations in terms of
cost and services have put a premium on effective supply chain reengineering.
It is essential to perform risk-benefit analysis of reengineering
alternatives before making a final decision. Simulation provides
an effective pragmatic approach to detailed analysis and evaluation
of supply chain design and management alternatives. However, the
utility of this methodology is hampered by the time and effort required
to develop models with sufficient fidelity to the actual supply chain
of interest. In this paper, we describe a supply chain modeling framework
designed to overcome this difficulty. Using our approach, supply
chain models are composed from software components that represent
types of supply chain agents (e.g., retailers, manufacturers, transporters),
their constituent control elements (e.g., inventory policy), and
their interaction protocols (e.g., message types). The underlying
library of supply chain modeling components has been derived from
analysis of several different supply chains. It provides a reusable
base of domain-specific primitives that enables rapid development
of customized decision support tools.
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